O'CONNELL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 111, 12 June 1875, Page 6

O'CONNELL.

++ . JL 0 ? Mo 2 aa y>. tl i e _ 25ti <** January, 1847, O'Connell took part, for the last time, in the proceedings in ' Conciliation Hall/ The period was, as we have already mentioned, momentous in the history of the country The appalling destitution which was then rapidly enveloping the entire island, combined with the lamentable political differences which distracted the once powerful Eepeal party, naturally occupied the attention of that meeting. In the course of the observations he addressed to that assembly-his last public speech m Ireland-the Liberator said : ' I would have been ii Parliament to-night, but for the tempestuous state of the weather I cannot abide storms as I used. Igo to Parliament to call for food for the people. I began my campaign by calling for food—foodfood! In my letters it was my cry— food for the Irish people. Food at once is what I want. Disease and death will be found in every quarter if the Government will not act promptly/ Eeferring to a letter that had been published by 'Young Mr. MeaghS' dilating on some features in the Belgian Revolution, the Liberator observed :

" Oh, are there not some of you old enough to remember 1798 ? f n ?*J° mf aye no x it must have heard your fathers £5 Si,, t ?T ent f? suffered ' The P risons ™*« full. The scuff old reeked with human gore. Terror reigned throughout the land. I heard the shrieks of horrible suffering 1 reecho through the Eoyal Exchange. Cries of agony and despair were heard in every quarter. Human blood was shed like water Every crune was committed, and the yeomanry were frantic with bloodshed and slaughter. Oh! those who would inculcate such doctrines, or who would in the slightest degree favour them, are the worst enemies of teland lam going from you for a short time. ? i & ld T th .?'t m England I cannot do something beneficial for Ireland, I will come back immediately, and see what can be done in tne country. •

* v 5 yev c foB< J na « Thursday evening he left Ireland 'to attend to boa Parliamentary duties/ as the papers of the next morning announced. On that journey, the last he made from IrelanTh! was accompanied by Mr. John O'Connell, Mr. Daniel O'Cbnneu! Tumor, who had just been returned for Dundalk, and Alderman femotby O'Brien then the representative of- cTshelTthe i£JP On Monday, the Bth of February, the Liberator was in his placein heltouse of Commons. Thereto reiterated the demand for 'food*

and cautioned the Government that unless it acted promptly and vigorously, 'one quarter of the population would succumb to the famine/ which then afflicted the people. This was the last speech he spoke within the chamber of St. Stephen's. The papers the following morning stated 'the honourable member was scarcely audible m the reporters' gallery/ "Under date of the 13th of the same month he wrote the last letter he addressed to the Repeal Association. It was dated from the British Hotel, Jermyn Street London, and it announced that he intended to support Lord Geonre Bentinck's motion for lending for tne construction of the earthworks of railways in Ireland. Several long and important debates on this proposal took place, but in none of them was O'Connell able to take part. His absence from the house oJso important an occasion caused painful anxiety among the people. ?;2??5 8 fi? W f in - fact gone - For ft fooe S hi 8 st?eX fluctuated, and, though various rumours were afloat, none seemed ftfW Z ! i? 6 trUe extent °* danger. However, on Saturday, the 18th of February, we published a communication from our London corespondent which, we believe, was the first to giye an authentic statement as to the serious dangers that were apprehended The writer informed us that it was too true that for the previous few weeks O'Connell had been 'totally tumble' to attend to his accustomed duties. He seemed to suffer, remarked our correspondent from general prostration, and his physicans looked to ' rest, abstinence trom business, and a strict attention fo regimen,' rather than to medicine, for his recovery. On the 6th of March it was stated that he was then on the point of departure for Hastings, ' to seek benefit in change of air.' After a few weeks' sojourn in that place he Mt for Folkestone, and a letter from Mr. V. P. Fitzpatrick written at two o'clock on the 22nd of March, says: 'Within the last fifteen minutes the Prince Earnest steamer, bearing" the fe rato .r>. F ley ' £ nd , Toim S Dan to the shores of France, quitted this harbour. Bodily debility and mental depression continue to constitute has principal malady.' Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr iJitzsimons, who had accompanied him from London, having taken farewell of the great man, returned to Ireland. The distinguished invalid and his companions reached Bologne after a passage of a &£.*«' W^ h itwas thou S hfc had a benefical effect. On the «S °f ¥ axoh they amv ed in the French capital, and the 'TJnivers ' of that date announced that 'The hero of Ireland alighted at the Wuidsor Hotel at half-past four o'clock to-day.' The 'Univers' added to this announcement that 'the first physicans of Paris will be called together to-morrow, and, after the consultation, we hope to be able to make such statement as will reassure the friends of the glorious Emancipater of Ireland who may be anxious to salute him on his journey to Kome.' During his stay, in Paris he was waited upon by the principal English and Irish residents of the capital, and the then British Minister, the late Marquis of Normanby, was particular in his courteous attention. On the 29th he left Paris for Orleans, but before leaving he was waited on and presented with an address, full of generous expressions for his recovery I from the Electoral Committee. In his brief reply he assured the deputation that ' illness and emotion closed his lips.' The iournev Tf-u !?t. COnt i nued easy sta S €s > reaching Genoa on the morning of the 6th of May. s ,t ■." T^ c time ' the place ' and ihe occasion are each suggestive. Ireland s greatest citizen' is ill—sick unto death. It is too much to imagine that, as he lay on his couch in the Hotel Fider his acute and sensitive mind could hear, above the wail and lamentations of famine, his services questioned, his motives debated, his policy denied, and his very honour sought to be insinuated away ? -But, should those phantoms have rippled the calm of his last moments, let us hope that he recollected that misrepresentation calumny, and aspersion are the penalties which men have to submit to 'for being great.' No gleam of hope brightened the sad scene or encouraged the sorrow-stricken watchers. The symptoms grew more distinct— more marked. It was now clear that the crisis was not far off, and that the days of O'Connell were numbered. For a day or so he endured great pain. Then utter and complete prostration supervened, which baffled the most skilful treatment and the most unremitting attention. He now never spoke, and that voice on which mellifluous accents thousands— nay, millions— of his countrymen had hung in the ecstasies of rapture is hushed. And those lips from which had issued an eloquence soft and seductive as woman s love— an eloquence winged like a canticle, melancholy like a psalm, and varied like a drama— are closed and mute, And there in Genoa of glorious historic reminiscences, rising amphitheatrelike, as a thing of beauty, from the blue Mediterranean, with its stradas of white marble palaces, its promenades, and its terraces interlaced with parterres of beautiful and sweet-smellino- flowers— with its innumerable and magnificent churches, each the memorial of some great event— with the bare summits of the Apennines and the ice-capped tops of the Alps, towering, sentinel-like, above— with its surrounding citron and orange groves, and its gardens of mulberries, and pomegranates, and olives, intertwining their beauties and commingling their sweetness— here it was that the spirit of the Great Man of Ireland— a soul once stalwart but now broken and fretted— fled from the body and went heavenward— " ' The last Great Champion of the rights of Man. # The last Great Tribune of the world, is dead!' ' ttnef— unutterable, inconsolable— pervaded the land when on the morning of the 25th of May, we announced ' The Death of the Liberator.' The first intelligence of the deplorable event was conveyed to Ireland by a special courier from our London correspondent. It is unnecessary to describe the extent and intensity of the sorrow experienced by all classes, but more especially by that class which, through good and evil report, had continued unswervingly faithful to the Liberator, and whose allegiance to his principles never wavered. A complete widowhood seemed to have fallen on the land, and mourning covered it like a pall. The Association held a special meeting, and adopted an address informing the people, in brief terms, of their loss. The Corporation, which had summoned for that day, met, and at once adjourned for three

weeks. Special religions services were held in the pro-Cathedral, ' and from a thousand altars, accompanied by the prayers of the emancipated million Sj there ascended one universal supplication for the dead one. But this grief and mourning were not confined to his native land — they permeated to the furthest ends of the globe. " Yes, wherever throughout the habitable world, there was an Irishman capable of appreciating services great, permanent, and numerous, and of comprehending a genius brilliant, and a character gublimely perfect in its entirety — there was sorrowing for the death of O'Connell. This grief found fitting expression in the journals of the day. The ' Evening Packet,' the able organ of the Church Ascendancy party, laying aside the ascerbity of political contention, declared — ' A great man has fallen in Israel.' The ' Daily News/ pronouncing him ' the Irish Gracchus/ observed — ' O'Connell is a name on which we cannot write an epitaph and tlien have done ■with it. Day after day it will recur, bound as it is with the fate and the fortunes of Ireland, and will thus live in oar arguments, as in our memories, years taking from our antipathies, adding to our reverence, and swelling still the magnitude of his fame.' But it is from the contemporary Press of France that we gather a proper estimate of O'Connell' s character, services, and fame. Those ■writers, unbiassed by local feelings or party considerations, adjudged him solely by his public acts and his achievements. "And, so judging him, the 'TTnivers' pronounced him — 'A great and sincere Apostle of Liberty.' " The { Constitutionnel ' said — ' The death of such a man at any time would have been an important event, but, in the present difficult situation of England, and with famine desolating Ireland, the disappearance of the Liberator is a crisis extremely important/ "The ' Gazette de Lyons' remarked that his had been 'a life of ceaseless toil and matchless glory/ "'Le Ehone' 6aid — 'He has left behind him a reverence the lovliest, the most beautiful, the purest, destined to live in the memory of man/ "The 'Journal de Commerce' declared — 'The greatest of the ■world's sons has departed — the world grieves.' 1 And the ' Debats' proclaimed — 'The greatest of Ireland's citizens, and perhaps her last hope, is gone/ "In the Trench Chambers Montalembert spoke his eulogy — in the Cathedral of Paris that sainted Archbishop who afterwards fell at the barricades, shot down while trying to dissuade the people from the folly of resisting longer, announced the greatness of ' Ireland's Emancipator' — and in St. Peter's, the greatest of Church orators, the eloquent Padre Ventura, delivered a masterly panegyric in the presence of an immense assemblage, which included all the Cardinals, archbishops, and eminent peraonages in the Eternal City, in which he said : ' The Simon of the new law is gone.' The heart of the Liberator having, in accordance with his last request, been deposited in Rome, his remains were conveyed to Ireland. They reached Dublin on Monday, the 2nd of August, and were at once brought to the proCathedral where they lay in state until the following "Wednesday. The coffin bore the inscription : '"DAHNEIi O'COIfNELL, Ireland's Liberator, YJhile on his way to the scat of the Apostles, Slept in the Lord at Genoa, May the 15th, In the year 1847. He Jived 71 years 9 months and 9 days.' "On "Wednesday, the obsequies took place — the Metropolitan Church being appropriately draped in mourning. It was thronged to its uttermost capacity. Thousands, unable to obtain admission, crowded all the neighbouring streets. The gallery underneath the organ was appropriated to the members of his family and their relatives. There were then present, besides many others, hi» four sons — Maurice, Morgan, John, and Daniel — and docile, courteous, and • Honest Tom Steele.' The members of the Hierarchy who took part in the sad ceremonial, which was conducted on a scale of unusual splendour, were : " The Most Rev. Dr. Murray, then Archbishop of Dublin. " The Most Rev. Dr. Nicholson, then Archbishop of Corfu. " The Most Rev. Dr. Polding, then Archbishop of Australia. " The Most Rev. Dr. Cantwell, Bishop of Meath. " The Most Rev. Dr. Higgins, then Bishop of Ardagh. " The Most Rev. Dr. Keating, then Bishop of Eerna. " The Most Rev. Dr. Maginn, then Bishop of Derry. " The Most Rev. Dr. McNally, Bishop of Clogher. " The Most Roy. Dr. Murphy, then Bishop of Hyderabad. " The Most Rev. Dr. Wholan, Bishop of Bombay. " There was also a vast assemblage of clergymen from all parts of the country present on that memorable day. The funeral oration was delivered by the Very Rev. Dr. Miley — he who had accompanied him on kis last journey, and who was his faithful and affectionate friend and companion throughout his illness. The following day, Thursday, the sth of August — the eve of the anniversary of his birth— his remains were conveyejno Glasnevin, where they now rest in an unfinished grave. The iuneral was immense, and well testified the people's love ani sorrow. Such a procession was never witnessed in the Irish metroplis. It included all ranks, oil sections ; and every popular representative body in the country sent its delegates to join in it. The Trades, too — untainted in their fealty — who had accompanied him in imposing array to many a peaceful •victory — were present, and so extensive was the sad cortege that the day had fai advanced ere the end of it had reached the cemetery. The coffin was accompanied to the grave by the bishops whose names we have mentioned, and who were joined by the Most E-ev. Dr. Mac Hale — by the members of his family and their relatives — by ' Honest Tom Steele/ and by a vast number of his private and political friends ; and thus terminated the funeral of ' Ireland's greatest citizen, and, perhaps, her last hope ' — ' while the tree Of Freedom's wither'd trunk puts forth a leaf Even, for thy tomb a garland let it be— The Forum's Champion and the People's CMef.' " — Nation.